1982

                1982 feels very much like a year of endings.  A whole host of bands, both old-wave and new-wave either break up (the Jam, the Beat, Richard & Linda Thompson, the Who, Mission of Burma, Squeeze, the Mekons, Roxy Music) or lose crucial members, keeping going only as a shadow of their former selves (the Clash, the Damned, Black Sabbath).  The Cars and Fleetwood Mac both go on hiatus after this year, and just to top it off, the already broken-up Zeppelin release their final studio album.  So the good news is that all (or at least most) of these bands go out on a high note, making ’82 still a reasonably strong year.  The bad news is that 1983 is going to be a year where new artists come to the fore by necessity, not necessarily because of any great creative breakthroughs.  On the other hand, the silver lining is that we start to already see the seeds of what that next thing will be, esp. as alt-rock emerges as distinct from New Wave.

                If this is the last gasp of New Wave (and 1^st generation punk), at least it goes out strong, if increasingly influenced by non-rock styles.  Indeed, the classic synth-heavy New Wave sound is almost completely absent this year, replaced by homages to other musical styles.  This is evident in the soul-punk fusion sound worked by the Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, and the Beat, all of whom move closer to each other sonically this year.  The Jam have always had a soul element to their sound, but they delve deep into it this year, while the soul-style horn charts are a relatively new addition for the Stiff Little Fingers.  SLF also, for what it’s worth, keep a stronger punk element in their sound than the Jam, who are pretty much just a hard-edged soul/funk group at this point.  The Beat, unsurprisingly, have more of a Jamaican influence in their variant on this sound, although more reggae than ska/rocksteady.  Still, you’d hardly call them a  ska band anymore.  You’d say the same thing about the other Second Wavers either.  Madness have completed their transition into a classic-era Kinks tribute band, and produce their finest album (which actually can stand up to the best of the Kinks’ classics as well).  Certainly “Our House” is a fine fine single, deserving of being Madness’s biggest hit.  The Specials are done, but their first successor group is here.  The Fun Boy Three are basically the 3 vocalists of the Specials, so unsurprisingly emphasize their vocal harmonies, but more surprisingly go deep into non-rock sounds.  If there’s a precedent in rock, it might be something between Mungo Jerry and a far less antagonistic version of Public Image’s percussive experiments from last year.  But really it’s just entirely their own sound (well, and Bananarama’s, since they’re guests on the Fun Boy Three’s record, and the Fun Boy Three will guest on a Bananarama single this year).

                Also moving into non-rock territories are both Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson.  In both cases, they’re more or less looking backward, to the classic pop sound of the ‘40s & ‘50s, albeit updated sonically to the early ‘80s.  So their arrangements in both cases recall, say, Frank Sinatra, with tricky melodies and complex orchestration & horn chards, but neither Elvis nor Jackson can really croon, so instead the songcraft & lyrics get foregrounded.  In both cases, the project definitely works, and you could make a case for both that they hit a peak here, although again in both you kinda miss the raw punk energy of their first couple of records.

                The Clash obviously moved past a simple punk sound a couple of albums ago, but continue their idiosyncratic path here.  They do put out their two biggest hits, the classic-rockin’ “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” and the very New Wave “Rock The Casbah,” but anyone who calls Combat Rock the Clash’s sellout record clearly hasn’t listened to the rest of it.  Past those two tracks, this one is as weird as Sandinista!, and that’s definitely a compliment.  Here, though, they move past their reggae influences as well as their punk ones, opening up to all sorts of other styles, including Beat poetry, sampledelica, and bursts of hip-hop.

                If the mainstream success of the Clash was unexpected, the mainstream success of Gang of Four is downright befuddling.  Admittedly, a lot of the people who made “I Love A Man In A Uniform” a club hit probably didn’t grasp the band’s Marxist subtext, but even so, Gang of Four do sound perhaps more radio-friendly than they did earlier.  Although Songs of the Free is sonically not radically different than Solid Gold, so it’s far more attributable to Gang of Four developing a sense of humor, even if it is a black sense of humor.  Gang of Four’s most uneven record yet, but their highs were quite high. 

                If ’82 is a year for unexpected mainstream hits by bands like the Clash and Gang of Four, it’s vaguely reassuring that instead of courting chart success, the Fall run screaming away from it.  Hex Enduction Hour is sometimes called the best Fall LP, which it might be, but it’s certainly the most Fall-like, meaning it’s the essence of the Fall sound unleavened by mainstream punk, rockabilly, pop, or electronic elements.  Basically just the sound of a Can-style prog-rock band getting drunk and hammering out a groove while the lead singer spews cracked angry poetry on top.  So, ironically, this is the album that has the Fall song Americans are most likely to recognize (“Hip Priest,” thanks to its use in the climactic scene in Silence of the Lambs).  The Fall really are the Frank Zappa of post-punk (misanthropic frontman, constantly shifting but consistently talented backing musicians, ridiculous number of albums, and a tendency to ignore broader musical trends), so like Zappa, I won’t talk about the Fall as much as I might for this project.

                Outside of the Fall and Gang of Four, most of the big-name post-punks are either done or quiet this year, but the second string post-punks seem to be moving closer and closer to garage rock.  This is perhaps best illustrated by the Dream Syndicate, whose “Tell Me When It’s Over” I have on both a post-punk comp and a garage-rock comp.  Also the Church do a post-punk cover of “I Am A Rock,” which again is straight out of the garage-rock playbook.  The Neats come at it from the other direction, but add post-punk elements to a garage rock sound.  All this suggests that post-punk, more than New Wave or punk directly, may be the secret direct predecessor to alt-rock in the 80s.  Certainly post-punk, like alt-rock, but unlike New Wave, never really set its sights on chartbusters.

                Perhaps illustrating this argument is Mission of Burma, who straddle the lines between post-punk and alt-rock (as well as prog-rock and punk rock, but not New Wave).  Their only original-period album comes out this year, and it’s a phenomenal record, combining shifting prog-like song structures, post-punk guitar tones, and punk energy.  “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate” even shows up the hardcore kids.  But if Mission of Burma straddle the alt-rock/post-punk line, we also get some of the first unambiguously alt-rock acts this year.  R.E.M. sounds like a post-punk band on their debut single last year, but on their debut EP (Chronic Town) they’ve become something else, with less aggression, less synth, more folk, and a much more opaque approach.  The Replacements are also moving from their juvenilia (last year’s fun but straightforward punk Sorry Ma Forgot To Take Out The Trash) to hints of their classic Westerberg sound (the one the Gin Blossoms & Goo Goo Dolls stole in the ‘90s).  It’s really only on “Kids Don’t Follow,” though, as the rest of the Stink EP is more sloppy, straightahead punk.  So R.E.M. and the Replacements are stumbling toward their places as major figures of alt rock (for that matter, Hüsker Dü are kicking around as a minor hardcore band at this point), but the Violent Femmes release the first proper alt-rock record this year.  Their debut certainly has punk and proto-punk roots (a big Jonathan Richman influence over basically acoustic punk-rock songs), but is definitely neither a punk record, a post-punk record, nor a New Wave one. 

                A band that doesn’t fit at all, neither as punk nor alt-rock, however, is X.  I find myself wondering how a band so excellent can be so largely forgotten, and I suspect it’s their neither-fish-nor-fowl problem.  Definitely not a New Wave act, but too early to be an alt-rock band, and too trad-influenced to be a punk group, they just put out phenomenal roots-punk albums (if you like, what the Stones might have hoped to sound like as a punk band, if they emphasized their Chuck Berry roots).  Phenomenal singles too – check out “Hungry Wolf.”  And influential; not just on later roots-punk bands like Social Distortion, but I hear elements that R.E.M. will pick up on as well.  One thing is for certain, though: they definitely didn’t fit in alongside the hardcore that dominated L.A. punk rock.

                I don’t know if hardcore reaches its peak this year, but it is the year where hardcore is most-represented in my collection.  I still don’t love the genre, but I can see its merits.  People who don’t really care for reggae praise The Harder They Come because the different vocalists differentiate an otherwise same-sounding music (they’re wrong about reggae all sounding the same, but right that The Harder They Come is a phenomenal record).  Similarly, I find comps to be some of the best ways to appreciate hardcore, and as an ex-Bostonian, that means I’ve got praise for Boston hardcore’s iconic comp, This Is Boston, Not L.A.  Hearing a bunch of hardcore acts side-by-side calls attention to their varied approaches and lyrical concerns.  So I can note, for instance, that the Freeze have a greater emphasis on hooks or clever basslines, or that the F.U.s have a stronger Ramones influence.  I also have a soft spot in my heart for the Proletariat, who have a Wire-Gang of Four fusion sound, right down to obviously faked British accents.  Also showing off an obvious fake British accent are the Beastie Boys, still a hardcore band at this point (and RIP Adam Yauch).  The Beastie Boys are an example of a band who started in hardcore, but pretty quickly moved past it.  Bad Religion, by contrast, may be the finest hardcore band, just because they kept with the style so much longer but did so much with it.  They’re pretty primitive at this point, but the basic elements (hyperliterate lyrics, some vocal harmonies, a focus on melody underneath the sheets of noise) are all in place.  Still, the peak of hardcore might just be the first two Bad Brains records, the first of which is this year.  Bad Brains were (are) phenomenal musicians, who packed so much musical virtuosity into their speed-of-light hardcore songs that it’s easy to miss just how much is going on, and mistake the blur for something simpler.  It’s almost inevitable that they’d turn into a metal band, with that combination of speedy and virtuosic playing.  Still, while I respect the variety, they’re a pretty poor reggae band when they do slow it down to play reggae songs.  You can’t help but wish that they’d mix the punk and reggae, Clash-SLF style.

                While Bad Brains will become a reggae band in a few years, metal circa 1980 is itself having a pretty good year.  Sabbath’s Dio-based revival comes to an end, although not before they put out a pretty fun live album (good versions of Dio-era tracks, plus it’s fun to hear Dio sing the Ozzy songs).  Ozzy, meanwhile, releases his own album of Sabbath-era songs.  But the real action is in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands (and NWOBHM is just about the most useless acronym ever).  Judas Priest move back toward a more metal sound (away from AC/DC-style hard rock), although the vocal melody of “Electric Eye” does recall Devo’s “Smart Patrol/Mr.DNA” – maybe Devo’s appearance on the Heavy Metal soundtrack provided unexpected sources of influence.  More exciting still is that Iron Maiden find their superior vocalist in Bruce Dickinson, and arrive at the historically-minded epic sound on which they’ll make their name.  Now is as good at time as any, I suppose, to lament how far metal will fall from ’82, based almost entirely on the decline of the metal vocalist.  Metal used to hold some of the finest vocalists (from a technical standpoint) in all of pop music.  Whatever you may think of the stylistic tics of Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, or Bruce Dickinson, these were powerful singers with impressive ranges.  I can only shake my head in disgust that metal by the 2000s has become the domain of cartoonishly awful death metal growls.  Actually, cartoonish is unfair.  Actual cartoon vocalist Nathan Explosion sounds less ridiculous than most actual metal singers circa 2012.  sigh.

                Anyway, outside of the harder realm, and deeper into the mainstream, it’s hard to talk about 1982 without talking about the biggest album of pretty much all time: Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  And since it’s almost inevitable anyway, I’ll talk about it in the context of Michael Jackson vs. Prince.  Way back in 1979, the last year they both released an album, Jackson won handily, with the innovative Off the Wall easily trumping the warmed-over R&B of Prince’s first two albums.  By ’82, it’s a far more difficult call.  Prince is obviously far more prolific.  Jackson will only, after all, release one more album this decade, and will just spin off Thriller singles into 1984.  This, incidentally, is a mark against, as far as I’m concerned: I’d much prefer bands to release a bunch of short records, evolving their sound, than a single fussed-over singles-factory they can stagnate with for half a decade.  Anyway, Thriller vs. 1999 is a much harder call than Thriller vs. 1999 & Controversy & Dirty Mind (where Prince would win handily).  Judging just these two records, Jackson is pressing forward while Prince is consolidating.  Jackson tries his hand at hard rock, Beatles-style pop, Afrobeat, Motown pop (unsurprisingly) and synth-funk, while Prince basically just works a synth-funk groove (with hints of Afrobeat, at least on “Automatic”).  Still, while “Thriller” is pretty damn funky, it can’t step to “D.M.S.R.” the funkiest synth-funk since “Flashlight” (and Prince shows a pretty hefty George Clinton influence here).  It’s also worth noting how “Beat It” basically is Michael Jackson’s attempt to write a Prince-style rocker, but Jackson had to bring in a ringer to play the guitar solo (Eddie Van Halen) while Prince would have just played the damn solo himself.  And that might be the crux of the difference.  Thriller covers a lot more stylistic ground, and does have a great deal of Jackson’s personality but is the culmination of Motown’s assembled-from-parts approach.  1999, and Prince’s career in general, is much more the product of a single creative vision, with a lot more idiosyncratic weirdness built in.  So bizarrely, since both were made up almost entirely of singles (or at least half of 1999), Thriller has better singles while 1999 is the better album.

                One style that neither Prince nor Jackson touch at all (and indeed neither will ever be all that comfortable with) is hip-hop, which sees a couple of crucial singles this year.  Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” is a big lyrical step forward, moving away from party-jam raps to using rap as a platform to actually say something.  Similarly important, but in terms of musical innovation, is Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock.”  On one level, it’s just another sample-based track, but it’s one of the first to both pick a non-obvious source (German progressive rock) and really add something musically to the production.

                Finally, turning to the old-wavers, some developments in both progressive rock and folk-rock.  King Crimson basically work the same post-punk sound as last year, with perhaps a greater concession to song-craft over chunky grooves.  Rush, however, go much deeper into their own New Wave path, releasing their most synth-heavy album to date.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t prefer the Permanent Waves/Moving Pictures sound, but I have to give credit to them for evolving musically.  And the results are still plenty good, especially on “Subdivisions,” another illustration of Peart’s phenomenal subtlety as a lyricist.  Unexpectedly, Jethro Tull return with a New Wave edge this year as well (there were a couple of universally panned albums in between this and Stormwatch, but I don’t have them).  Sadly, Tull don’t wear the new sounds nearly so well.   Their songcraft is basically unchanged, and some of the songs themselves are really quite good, but if ever there was an album ruined by production, it’s this one.  You only need to compare 1982’s “Jack Frost & The Hooded Crow” to the rerecorded version from the 2003 Christmas album done in ‘classic’ folk-rock style to hear how these are good songs drowned in dated production.  Oh, well.  Sadly, this is the last time I’ll be mentioning Tull in these reviews, too (I think).

                Another unexpected return from a band with Fairport Convention links is Richard & Linda Thompson.  Like Tull, they’ve basically abandoned their classic folk-rock sound for something more modern, although for Richard & Linda, this means sounding not unlike Fleetwood Mac.  This fits both in the mix of softer melodies and unexpectedly hard/jagged guitar rockers, and insofar as Shoot Out The Lights, like Rumors, is an album made by a band/duo in the middle of a personal separation.  I give the edge to Richard & Linda, though.  Richard’s a better songwriter and guitarist than Lindsay Buckingham, and I’ll take Linda on her worst day over either Christine McVie or (gah) Stevie Nicks on their best.  After all, only the late lamented Sandy Denny was a better vocalist out of the folk-rock scene.

                Crosby, Stills, & Nash also return this year, but I find myself not really caring.  Through the late ‘70s, CSN, both as individuals and as a group, were one of the places I looked for signs of life, only to be mostly disappointed.  So this year they’ve got their best album since at least Songs For Beginners, but it’s still just OK.  Maybe I’ve just been burned by them too many times.  Easily their worst album cover to date, though (though they’ll somehow manage to do worse on their next one and much worse on Live It Up). 

Their sometimes bandmate Neil Young, however, releases his weirdest album to date, and if you discount Arc and Dead Man as an EP and soundtrack respectively, his weirdest regular album ever.  Still, he should get points 1) for sonic adventurousness and 2) for actually sounding like cares about an album for the first time since Rust Never Sleeps.  If Hawks & Doves was tossed off to its detriment and Re*Ac*Tor was tossed off to the good, Young sounds like he really cares on Trans, oddball vocoder experiments and all.  The songs underneath are generally pretty good.  It also helps to know the backstory.  Young was trying to express the pain at his inability to communicate with his cerebral palsy-afflicted son.  And it’s oddly even more affecting to know that he then didn’t tell people what he was up to.  But knowing this makes a song like “Transformer Man” downright moving, not just despite the vocoder, but because of it. 

Song of the Year:  The Clash – “Straight To Hell.”  Quite probably their most moving/heartbreaking song, and sonically unique as well.  No wonder Strummer said he thought it was the best Clash song.  Try to track down the long version, with the violin part.

Album of the Year:  I thought a lot about this one.  There are a lot of very good albums from 1982, and I seriously considered at various points Thriller, 1999, Vs., and Combat Rock.  At the end of the day, though, there was only one great album released in ’82, and it was Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.  Like Dirty Mind insofar as it was a collection of demos released as a proper album, but unlike Dirty Mind in just about other conceivable way.  Unrelentingly bleak, at times heartbreakingly so (esp. “State Trooper”), but grounded in the economic realities of Reaganomics’ fallout rather than youthful alienation, making it an adult kind of bleakness that stares down the darkness and accepts it, because sometimes there’s nothing to do but endure absent hope.  The punks may have hated Reagan (and Thatcher) but no one put out a more damning anti-Reagan record than Springsteen did here, not by mentioning the man but just by looking at what it meant to live in Reagan’s America.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  The Violent Femmes.  I didn’t realize until this year that they were not only a great 80s alt-rock band, but that they beat everybody out of the gate to put out the first alt-rock album. 

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Crosby Stills & Nash.  They’re not bad at all this year, but I’m just surprised at how the long years of mediocrity have numbed me to their putative comeback.

Album List

Bad Brains - Bad Brains

Bad Religion - All Ages

Bauhaus – 1979-1983

Black Sabbath - Live Evil

Blue Öyster Cult - Workshop Of The Telescopes

Bruce Springsteen - 18 Tracks

Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Cheap Trick - The Authorized Greatest Hits

Crosby Stills & Nash – Daylight Again

Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Carry On

David Bowie - Best Of Bowie

Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

Edwyn Collins | Orange Juice - A Casual Introduction 1981/2001

Elvis Costello - Best Of

Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom

Elvis Costello - Out Of Our Idiot

Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac

Fun Boy Three – Summertime

Fun Boy Three – The Fun Boy Three

Gang Of Four - Another Day/Another Dollar

Gang Of Four - Songs of the Free

George Harrison - Best Of Dark Horse 1976-1989

Goblin - Goblin

Iron Maiden - Misc.

Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast

J.J. Cale - Very Best Of

Jerry Garcia - Oregon State Prison 5/5/82

Jethro Tull - The Broadsword And The Beast

Joe Jackson – Night and Day

Joni Mitchell - Hits

Judas Priest - Metal Works '73-'93

King Crimson – Beat

King Crimson - In the Studio 1981-1984

King Crimson - Live 1982-1984

Led Zeppelin - Coda

Lou Reed - Collections

Madness – Presents The Rise & Fall

Madness - Total Madness: The Very Best Of Madness

Merle Haggard - HAG: The Best Of Merle Haggard

Michael Jackson - The Essential Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson – Thriller

Midnight Oil - 20,000 Watts R.S.L.: Greatest Hits

Minor Threat - Flex Your Head!

Mission Of Burma - Vs.

Motörhead - No Remorse

Neats - The Monkey's Head in the Corner of the Room

Neil Young - Lucky Thirteen

Neil Young – Trans

New Order - Movement

New Order - Substance

New Order - The Peel Sessions

Nick Lowe - Basher: The Best Of Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe - Nutted By Reality

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: History

Prince – 1999

Prince - The B-Sides

Prince - The Hits

Queen - Greatest Hits

R.E.M. - Chronic Town

Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights

Richard Thompson - Small Town Romance [Live]

Rick James - Motown Legends: Give It to Me Baby

Roxy Music - The Best Of Roxy Music

Rush - Chronicles

Rush – Signals

Squeeze - Singles 45's And Under

Star Trek II - James Horner - Star Trek II Soundtrack

Stiff Little Fingers - Now Then...

Sun Ra - Nuclear War

The Beastie Boys - The Sounds Of Science

The Beat – Special Beat Service

The Clash - Clash On Broadway

The Clash - Combat Rock

The Clash - Live At Shea Stadium

The Clash - Live: From Here to Eternity

The Clash - Super Black Market Clash

The Damned - Strawberries

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour

The Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 32: Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Tr

The Jam - Compact Snap

The Jam – The Gift

The Mekons - I Have Been to Heaven and Back..., Vol. 1

The Ramones - Mania

The Replacements - Stink [EP]

The Who - The Ultimate Collection

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback II: Spoiled & Mistreated

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback V: Through The Cracks

Toots & The Maytals - Time Tough - The Anthology

U2 - B-Sides 1980-1990

V/A - 12 Classic 45s

V/A - Back In The Day Jamz

V/A - Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1

V/A - Children Of Nuggets I

V/A - Children Of Nuggets II

V/A - Children Of Nuggets III

V/A - Children Of Nuggets IV

V/A - Old School I

V/A - Old School II

V/A - Post Punk Chronicles: Left Of The Dial

V/A - Pure Funk

V/A - This Is Boston, Not L.A.

Violent Femmes - Add It Up (1981-1993)

Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes

X - Beyond & Back: The X Anthology

X – Under The Big Black Sun